


strike the match

by michellejones



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-03 22:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11541726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michellejones/pseuds/michellejones
Summary: She doesn't want to ask.Her voice is quiet when she does. “Are we going to die here?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> reenactment of one of my fav scenes from another ship of mine. if you don't like them, ignore it.
> 
> my babies petermj for mashi

_you use your heart as a fortress_

* *

Michelle doesn't know where she is. Her brain feels like it's on fire.

There's a sharp pain in her knee when she tries to move, and rope twisted around her wrists, confining her to a steel post and rubbing her skin raw.

She closes her eyes. She tries to remember where she was last.

Then she hears something moving behind her, stirring quietly.

She remembers.

“Michelle,” he says.

“Where are we?” She tries hard to keep her voice level. To maintain some kind of façade. It's the one thing she can't afford to lose right now, sitting in front of him.

He sounds so angry. “You shouldn't be here right now.”

“It's not like I volunteered myself to come,” she tells him. Spider-Man.

“It's my fault. . . it's my fault we're stuck here. That _you're_ stuck here.” He pauses, and the silence hurts a little bit. “I'm sorry.”

He sounds like he needs something, but she doesn't know how to help. He sounds like he's in pain.

_Can he move?_

Her vision darkens slightly. It's hard to sit up right.

She doesn't want to ask.

Her voice is quiet when she does. “Are we going to die here?”

* *

Someone comes down eventually.

All Michelle can feel is the throbbing in her head, and it's hard to keep her eyes open as she watches him. The man who brought them here.

“You.” The man is looking at her directly. “What's your name?”

“Does it matter?” she asks him slowly, as if she were speaking to a child.

“You're right. It doesn't,” he says. “What matters is that you're going to write about this.”

Michelle visibly stiffens. “What are you talking about?”

“The death of Spider-Man, of course.”

*

He kneels in front of Spider-Man, who has reduced himself to stone. His hands are around the masked boy's throat.

She's never believed the boy to be silent. . . or quiet.

Or _dead_.

She doesn't want to watch. _She can't._

Her hands are shaking, and she's trying to break through. Her wrists are bleeding now, and the sound of her body hitting the steel post is distant, even to her own ears.

It should be loud, or too painful. Unbearable. It's cutting into her back, and it's bruising.

She can't explain it. She can't explain why she's doing this.

She doesn't stop.

All she can hear is ringing, and maybe her own screams.

“No!” It's her own voice. Her own tears. She almost feels embarrassed. “Stop! _Let go of him!_ ”

There's a moment of silence between them. It feels like being lost in the ocean, and she can't breathe.

“Okay,” the man says.

He lets go of Spider-Man, who gasps for air desperately. The boy starts cough, and she thinks he's crying a little bit. Maybe she is too.

MJ presses herself against the post, holding herself up. And she breathes.

Her entire body is numb.

She's so relieved.

Her eyes are closed, and there's a sharpness against her throat that she can only assume is a knife.

*

“This is better,” he says. “It'll hurt more.”

Michelle feels like rolling her eyes. Even now.

But it hurts to talk, and there's a little bit of blood on her throat.

It sounds like a wheeze. “What hurts more than being strangled to death?”

“ _Love_ ,” he tells her. And there's a scream echoing in her ears that doesn't belong to them.

She can hear the shackles break, and a _crack_. Her head spins.

The knife falls into her lap, and there's someone else's blood on her face now.

The boy in red is by her side, and he's pulling her into his arms.

* *

Her head is resting on his shoulder as he takes them from building to building, across New York City.

She feels the soreness in her throat and knows the wetness of her cheeks. Her eyes burn, and her chest tightens.

_**Love?** _

She wraps her arms around him, and pulls herself closer.

He feels too much like home for someone she hardly knows.

* *

“I'm going to keep you safe,” he says.

His hands are on her cheeks, and she's sitting on her bed, looking up at him.

She thinks about asking him to stay, even though she can't find her voice. But she brings her hand to his and keeps it there instead, and she supposes that's enough.

The sky is dark and quiet.

She wishes she could count the stars outside her window. She pretends she's far away.

They sit in silence, until he turns to face her. She almost lifts her hands to touch him, to see his face.

“You're amazing, you know that?”

She can't believe the words aren't her own.

* *

She touches him when it's barely light out and the sun is rising. He's laying beside her.

“ _Peter_.” It sounds unbelievable to her own ears.

He looks up, and his mask is in his hands. She thought, maybe she'd kiss him.

 _It wasn't supposed to be like this._ The words he wants to say are written all over his face.

She kicks him out instead.

* *

_how'd you get so far away from me?_

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys i finished this and i never thought i would omg

_It's ripping me apart_

_You get too close_

_You make it hard to let you go_

* *

**_hey_ **

**_can we talk? please?_ **

**_it's really, really not what you think, mj_ **

_* *_

Peter's mark on her is visible and repulsive.

She sees it in the way she looks after she cries, sick and swollen and bruised.

The way her tears roll down her face and her neck. It's nauseating, and she'd hate to see herself.

Her phone vibrates in her hand.

“You lied to me,” she says.

The anger in her voice is thick and needy. It makes her shudder.

She fights off sleep, where she starts to see him again.

He's only in her dreams.

* *

**_can we figure out a way to talk about this?_ **

**_i really want to see you_ **

**_mj, i swear. i'd do anything_ **

_* *_

“I don't need you.”

She imagines that she's talking to Peter, instead of to herself in the mirror.

“I don't,” she says.

_What is she trying to prove?_

Her fingernails are biting into her palm.

“You got me hurt.” Her throat feels swollen, like she can't breathe. She traces the scar on her neck lightly. “And I don't even know who you are.”

* *

**_are you reading these? i can't tell anymore_ **

**_michelle... i'm just so sorry_ **

_* *_

The day comes when Peter stops approaching her at school.

That's good, she thinks. She can only walk away from him so many times, before it becomes impossible.

* *

She sees him with Ned across the hall.

They're talking, laughing; they don't see her in the crowd.

She watches them. And she knows that she's staring. But it's like she was never there to begin with.

There's this feeling in her chest that's swallowing her whole, as she looks at them. And she swears she's going to disappear, in thin air.

She looks at her hands, like she's surprised that they're even there. She sees herself shake.

She closes her eyes. And she finds him there, too.

* *

Two months is all it takes. There's nothing between them anymore.

She's starting to remember that Peter was one of her only friends.

And she really, really does miss him.

* *

She's still so angry. She touches her neck every night, before she goes to sleep.

She tries not to let it burn.

* *

She feels like she's on fire, hands clutching cold sheets.

Wrapping a hesitant hand around her throat, as if she were in control.

She's still tied up, in all of her dreams.

* *

There are times when he dies. Where Peter is all she can see, even as she sleeps. And she's crying over his body, like it'll bring him back to her.

Sometimes, he doesn't get to her in time. But she doesn't feel him cry, because she's already fallen into nothingness; away from him, like she is now. She could never know how he's feeling.

She thinks about that when she wakes up. And she feels so cold.

She almost calls him first.

* *

It's an envelope beneath her front door that changes the course of space and time.

She doesn't think to hesitate. She almost wishes she did.

She opens the first page, and her tears blotch the ink of his pen at the very bottom. She feels so angry at herself, because this still means the world to her, somehow.

_Your friend,_

_Peter_

* * *

_  
Michelle,_

_There's no way I'm able to tell you this without making a fool of myself. Because I know you don't want to hear it, but I think I should be fair to myself, too. It's one of the hardest things for me to piece together, because I care about you so much. More than anything, I think._

_I would've rather died back then than to have let anything happen to you. I know that. I see that scar on your neck, and it feels like I'm on fire. And I try to get myself to disappear somehow. It's the worst feeling. You don't even try to hide it, because you face things. I still have bruises that I pretend aren't there._

_You know, Michelle. . . Maybe we aren't meant for each other. Maybe you were right this whole time about us. And I think about that sometimes._

_I know how I feel, though. And I don't think that's going away any time soon._

_Your friend,_

_Peter_  

* * *

  _Michelle,_

_Do you think about me sometimes? I think about you so much; it's like I can barely breathe._

_It's not healthy, how much I want to see you smile. How much it hurts me to not be able to know you anymore, like I used to. But I just want you to be happy. That's more important._

_I don't want you to think I was hiding things from you because I don't trust you, or because I don't think you're my friend. Because each part of me that belongs to Spider-Man, and to this city, belongs to you._

_I think I'd give all I am to you. And I would like to think there's more to me than the mask, no matter how much I feel like there isn't sometimes._

_But MJ, sometimes you look at me, and I pretend like I don't know that you are. Because, if you knew I could see you, you'd run away from me. You'd never come back._

_I thought I should tell you that. You should know I've been selfish, in that way._

_Because, Michelle, I always notice you._

_Your friend,  
Peter_  

* *

She thinks he can be really stupid sometimes. 

* * 

_MJ,_

_Do you think, one day, we'll talk again?_

_It doesn't have to be like before. I don't even want it to be._

_I just miss you so much, and I'm realizing things that I wish I could tell you._

_I wish I could've told you how much I wanted to kiss you in your bedroom. How glad I was that you were safe. I'd never been more thankful in my entire life. I'd also never been so mad at myself._

_I wish I could tell you how much I like you, and how pretty everything you are is to me. How I can never take my eyes off of you, because you glow, and looking at you feels like a remedy to dark places in my mind that I wasn't even aware I had._

_I love listening to you talk. How you sound like you don't care, even though I know you do. I love how much you read. I even like you when you don't pay attention to me. The way I feel around you is so unique to me, and I've never met someone so special, once I got to know them. I can't believe I've never said this to you before, because it's always on my mind._

_You're so intelligent. I don't think to wish I were as smart as you, because you're always teaching someone something, and there's no way I could lead like you do. I could never be like you. I love that. You're so brave. And I miss you more than I can tell you, even in this shit letter. I just care about you._

_MJ, I think I love you._

_Peter_  

* * *

She's waiting silently on her rooftop, with her arms crossed, when she finally sees him.

He doesn't know she's here. He's in the mask, and they still haven't talked.

“Hey, loser!” she calls. And he meets her eyes, as he swings past her.

She feels a warmth inside her chest that only he can give her. And he comes back.

“Come closer,” she says. And then he's in her space, looking terrified, even beneath the mask. She tells him softly, “just look at me. . .” And then, “Peter, can I see you?”

His mask hits the floor. It's like she didn't even ask.

Her hands are on his face. She feels him shaking beneath her fingertips, and she brings herself a little closer.

Would he stay here, if she asked him to?

He touches her neck. He looks like he's about to cry.

And then she tells him,

_“I forgive you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!! i appreciate everything u guys say and your time

**Author's Note:**

> kudos n reviews feed me!
> 
> (note: also - i don't mean to bombard u guys w these crappy angsty things???? i'm kinda going through a hard time so i'm channeling my energy into writing. i'm sorry)


End file.
